When Heidi Nam Knudsen, head wine buyer and sommelier for London-based Ottolenghi Group, sat down to grilled eggplant, pomegranate, and walnut paste at Pheasant’s Tears restaurant on a 2013 business trip to Georgia, the world’s oldest recorded wine producer, she was seized with an idea. “It was so similar to what we do,” she said. “I texted Yotam that night to say he was coming back with me.”

Four years went by before they could swing a trip. In that time, wines from a half-dozen Georgian vineyards (all natural or biodynamic) were added to the Ottolenghi wine list, and travelers from across the globe started trickling into this small Caucasus nation straddling Asia and Europe after shots of the sunspeckled lobby at Tbilisi’s new Rooms Hotel and the misty Kazbegi Mountains started blowing up on social media.

Knudsen and Yotam Ottolenghi spent the first couple of days in Tbilisi, the capital city known for the candy-colored wooden homes that line the streets of Old Town, then hired a car to explore the regions of Imereti, to Tbilisi’s west, and Kakheti, to its east. These rural areas, wild and overgrown, with rambling vineyards, villages, and medieval-era monasteries, are home to deceptively simple-looking restaurants where home-style cooks with generous smiles do knockout chicken stews. Here, too, maverick winemakers ferment vintages in underground vats called qvevri, a 6,000-year-old practice.

Naturally, the duo’s visits revolved around food—khinkali dumplings for breakfast, quail and pickles at the markets, and evenings spent feasting at Georgia’s famed supra dinner parties, where courses of khachapuri (cheese breads), roast chicken, and stewed wild greens (pkhali) are punctuated with boisterous toasts of brola wine. In between, there were tastings with the winemakers Knudsen met four years ago, whose fruity chinuri whites pair beautifully with dishes like Cornish hake at Ottolenghi’s three restaurants.

“Georgian cuisine is emotional,” Knudsen says. “Vineyards are interspersed with orchards, barns, and vegetable patches; everything is grown together and feels so connected.” This vibe carried over to the meals they shared along the route, each one inevitably punctuated with multiple ceremonial pours of local chacha brandy.

The 10-plus-mile trail connecting the village of Juta, in Georgia’s Kazbegi region, to the remote highlands of Khevsureti is pilgrimage worthy for its breathtaking views of the Chaukhi Mountains.

Photo by Tanveer Badal

The Ottolenghi Guide to Eating and Drinking Around Georgia

Rent a car in Tbilisi and either overnight in the country at small village inns like the family-owned Twins Old Cellar in Kakheti or drive the hour back to the city every night.

TBILISI

Vino UndergroundThis stone-walled wine bar is co-owned by eight local vintners and showcases Georgia’s emerging natural wines. “This is where to meet top Georgian winemakers when in town,” Heidi Nam Knudsen says. Order the wild asparagus with sumac yogurt and a glass of fruity Saperavi Budeshari red.

PoliphoniaThis cavernous bistro has a rotating menu of traditional ethnic cuisines from all over Georgia, meaning you may have beet and carrot salads or wild leeks and poached eggs, depending on the night.

Khinkali, khachapuri, and sulguni cheese at Iago’s.

Photo by Benjamin Kemper

IMERETI

Nikoladzeebis MaraniOne of Knudsen’s favorite Georgian winemakers, Ramaz Nikoladze is head of the Slow Food movement in Georgia and produces biodynamic tsitska whites with no chemicals or herbicides. You can sip his tsolikouri direct from his qvevri.

Restaurant ZgapariFamily run and right on the Dzirula River, Zgapari specializes in mushrooms foraged in the surrounding area. “We had phenomenally good chicken with sour blackberry sauce,” Knudsen recalls.